Bittersweet Symphony
by dnrl
Summary: Series of oneshots, romantic, angsting, and otherwise. Pairings vary.
1. just like the sea

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

1: just like the sea

* * *

Sometimes, in the darkest time of the night, she will sit in her tiny bed with the window open. She can hear the cars rushing by stories below her apartment, and sometimes she can hear Percy's tiny breaths on the pillow beside her. Her fingers drift down and caress his tiny head, so soft with curling black hair. It is not her hair; her hair is plain and brown. No, he has his father's hair...so lustrous, black as the darkest ocean trench. 

She watches the breeze ruffle the baby's hair, sees his little hands reaching for something, clutching thin air desperately. She slides a finger into his hand and he relaxes, his tiny body softening as though he has found something dear to him at last. She will lean down to kiss him, and she smells the baby powder and the soap she used in his bath.

She also smells the sea; she can almost taste the salt on the breeze...

She hears the waves crashing against the shore, and she feels warm arms strong and steady around her waist. Long, deep breaths brush the hairs on the nape of her neck, and a bold aquiline nose nuzzles her skin gently. She is content to lay in the sand, and she has never seen so many stars...his hand brushes against her waist, and without knowing exactly how, she is aware of a tiny little life nestled inside of her. The surf wafts against her toes, and a warm sea breeze washes over her bare body...

And then a siren blares, and she is back again; she is trapped in this run-down apartment in the seediest part of New York, and there are no strong arms around her waist, no steady breaths, no skin brushing against hers. Her toes are clad in socks and very dry, and her thin nightgown clings to her body. She hugs the tiny boy next to her close to her breast, and she feels his breath splash across her skin.

It is at times like these, when she comes to know all that she's lost, that she allows herself to cry.

_And her tears tasted just like the sea..._

* * *


	2. goodbye

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

_

* * *

_

2: goodbye

_

* * *

_

She lies in the back of the bus as Zoe drives, her arm dangling listlessly off of the uncomfortably hard seat. Bianca is close to Zoe near the front, and she is keeping a rather wary eye on Grover, who is practicing his Barry Manilow in a misguided attempt to woo the unattainable Hunters. She laughs softly, a rather strange mix of humor, pity, and something else brewing in her voice.

She feels different. She's not the same as she was before. So much has changed; not in the world, so much, because it's still full of so much evil, but the people. People are crueller, tougher, than they were those years ago. She had seen Annabeth for the first time in seven years, and she hadn't recognized her. She hadn't recognized her because she could see no trace of that little-girl-Annabeth in those thinning, adult features.

Sometimes she tries to become a tree again, subconciously. Outside, she is boistrous and rude and unapologetic, but inside she is silent and crying, because when she got her life back she lost Thalia along the way. Now there is Angry Thalia and Sad Thalia and Tree Thalia and Happy Thalia, the first three being much, much more prevalent than the last.

If she closes her eyes and stands very, very still, she can remember some of those moments when she was nothing but a tree. The memories are diluted, negatives compared to photographs, but she can still feel them. She misses the sense of oneness, of being part of something bigger. She misses her roots, her firmness.

Sometimes, she can remember bigger things, moments in time over the course of those long seven years. She remembers that Luke and Annabeth used to come sit beneath her branches every day for a long time; a year, maybe. Then they stopped, gradually. Sometimes they came alone, but never together.

What she remembers most clearly are the tiny flashes of human memory: Annabeth hanging off of her branches, Luke, his face bandaged, sobbing against her trunk...they are like little flashes of light in an endless abyss of dark, and she holds onto them because she has nothing else to hold on to. ...Annabeth isn't Annabeth - Annabeth isn't even here anymore - and Luke is...

_A traitor...a fiend...a killer...a thief...a somber face...a glint of courage...a friend...a lov -_

The bus stops and she hears Zoe yelling at Grover, something about flowers and Frank Sinatra and Hillary Duff. She closes her eyes and raises her hands to cover her face, and she only realizes when her fingers touch her cheeks that they are wet and she is crying.

Her shoulders shake, and she hears Bianca calling, and she wipes away her

_past-romance-hope-laughter-dances-memories-happiness-sadness-regret-indecision-hatred-worry-life-love-_

tears and she forces a small smile into place.

"I'm here, I'm here! I'm coming," she says as she clambers up and out of the bus. "Hel-lo!"

_Goodbye.

* * *

_


	3. the end

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

3: the end.

* * *

Salty spray blew into his face, and drops of water glowed in the morning sunrise. He was laughing, and his smile was so bright that she thought it had to outshine the sun itself. His skin, so tan, was dancing under the light, and she could see all of his scars on his hands from training, thin and white and pale.

He saw where her eyes wandered and he leaned forward and tugged on a golden curl. _Princess curls_, he'd called them that first time. He had been half delirious when he stumbled past Thalia's tree and collapsed before the big house. She had rushed out with Chiron, and he had looked at her (she had been struck nearly dumb by those _eyes_) and had mumbled, "Princess curls."

"Anybody home, Wise Girl?"

"Always, Seaweed Brain."

Somehow, the insult had changed to a ...something new that she couldn't (wouldn't?) say, and life just went on. It unnerved her, because so many of her unspoken rules became immaterial around him, but she wouldn't complain. It certainly threw some unexpected variables into her life. She watched him go off on some tangent about the rock wall or something, and she nodded at the right intervals, but she wasn't listening. She idly wondered when he'd catch on.

"Anna_beth!_ You're not even listening!"

"Am so."

"I just said that Poseidon trumped your mom any day, and you nodded. Come _on. _I'm not that stupid."

He really wasn't stupid at all. Okay, he couldn't do math and he could barely read (well, neither could she), and he wasn't exactly well-endowed with common sense, but he could certainly use his head. He had a razor-sharp sense of humor and an unerring accuracy in figuring out what was wrong with someone...sometimes, however, that talent could become a flaw. Like now, for instance.

"Come on, Annabeth. What's up?"

"Nothing, Seaweed Brain."

"...Annabeth-Something-Chase, tell me what - "

"Minerva."

"...Say what?"

"Minerva. My middle name."

"..."

He watched her for a few minutes, and something shifted in those deep green eyes. He smiled, and it was softer and sweeter than before and her stomach played hopscotch while her heart threw itself into cardiac arrest. What was this? A scarred hand came up to tug on her princess curls.

"Okay, Wise Girl."

And she knew that he knew that she would be okay in the end.

* * *


	4. belong

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

_

* * *

_

4: belong

* * *

He doesn't know what to think or who to believe anymore.

He runs through shadows and past trees and bushes, their branches snagging and tearing at clothes and skin alike. He struggles with a particularly stubborn branch on an old poplar tree - _Don't go - please stay - don't run - you belong_

And with a monumental effort, his shirt tears, a large swath of the neon orange fabric remaining, hanging on the branch. He feels his eyes burning and he sniffs hard, trying to push those patches of wetness back down from wherever the hell they had come from...but they don't listen, and they run down his cheeks freely as he runs even further into the night. They are hot and salty against his skin, and when he tastes them he thinks, _Sea, ocean, Percy, Bianca, dead, lies, runrunrun..._

_Bianca - Bianca - Bianca -_

Even when she had left him for those _girls_ he always knew that if he had ever called, ever needed help, she would be there, stalwart and strong, supporting him and even carrying him if things were too rough. But that protection, that safety, is gone now, and he is all alone in the world.

As he runs away, flashes of the images and half-formed words that make up memories filled his mind. Sunlight dappled on a perfect blanket of snow early in the morning, playing Mythomagic with Conner from the Hermes cabin, attempting to run faster than the trees, falling into the stream during canoeing, the food fight, hitting an Ares kid in archery, laying down in the Hermes cabin at night and feeling...

Feeling...

He slows to a walk, and finally he stops and falls to his knees, hopelessly lost in the seemingly endless woods.

Feeling...

_Like I finally belonged._

But he doesn't. Because...because...

Deep down, he knows that they would never have found a cabin for him. Deep down, he knows that even if he was a half-blood like the other kids - like his shirt - said he was, he wasn't like them. The only people who had made him feel like he had a shot there were Bianca...and Percy. Percy, son of Poseidon, unwanted on Olympus save by his own parent, a mistake, and yet he was kind of happy. Content. Percy is brave and strong and everything he had ever wanted to be, and he had thought that maybe, just maybe, this camp could turn him into that kind of person.

But it couldn't. He isn't made to be strong or brave, he sees that now; he is weak and useless, a defective toy that children think is fun for a while until they see how pointless it really is. He is made to hide and cower while heroes - those who are bigger and better - do the real work.

He struggles to rise up from the dirt but fails. The ground is cold, and the dampness is seeping into the knees of his jeans, and he is crying again and the tears are scalding against his skin. He covers his face with his hands as he cowers alone in the darkness of the forest, sobbing silently, wondering if he will ever belong.


	5. he laughs

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

5: he laughs

* * *

In those long, lazy summer afternoons, when the nymphs play in the glades and the satyrs blow into their reed pipes, they lie together beneath _Her _tree and just breathe. They sit side by side, leaning against the rough bark, their shoulders sometimes bumping together for a brief moment before they break apart again.

Sometimes he wonders what she is thinking. Maybe she's working out advanced Calc or Trig problems in her head; maybe she's contemplating the great mathematical advances of mankind; maybe she's figuring out how to re-build the Coliseum. Maybe she's thinking about how beautiful the day looks, with the sunlight dappling the grass and the clouds glowing white in the neverending sky. But when he glances at her, it doesn't matter what she's thinking of.

She looks so _incredible_ sitting there lost in thought. Her gray eyes hold thousands of different worlds, different trains of thought, little flurries of life that dance about in the misty ashen eyes only to disintigrate into nothing. Her golden princess curls dance in every breathy flutter of wind that washes against them, shining like mercurial gold in the splashes of sunlight. Fingers, somewhat calloused with a scar or two, twirl long green strands of wildgrass.

"Seaweed Brain?"

"Mm."

She pauses for a long time, and he wonders what she's thinking all over again, because with her a person can never know. Her mind is such a vast expanse of time and reason and logic, a beautiful titanic soul with an incredible heart to match, that every thought is elusive and unique. He wonders if she's thinking about curing cancer or creating nuclear fission or fixing the Tower of Pisa or bringing Luke back or -

"What are you thinking about?"

When the laughter starts, she shoots him a strange look, but she doesn't say anything. She knows that maybe she won't understand, and that's okay with her. She shakes her head and nudges his shoulder with hers. "You think too much," she says.

Beneath the spreading branches of _Her_ tree, they sit together, friends in the sunlight, and he laughs.

* * *


	6. every time

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

6: every time

* * *

Peanut butter and marshmallows.

Ah, how far she had fallen. Not even a half-hour ago (really? that short?), she had been laughing and singing out by the fire with all of the campers, roasting marshmallows in the twenty-foot-high green campfire, joking with her brothers and sisters. And yet here she sat, lying, as it were, in the dregs of what had turned out to be a relatively crappy day. Oh well. She still had her little snack, her refuge...peanut butter and marshmallows.

Always.

She viciously dug a spoon into the pungent spread, smearing it across the soft, squishy white surface of a jumbo marshmallow. She crammed it into her mouth whole, trying not to think, because thinking hurt, and if she had learned one thing at an early age it was that pain was to be avoided at all costs. Pain equals not fun. That was how her mind had worked when she was...like...two. She was a daughter of Athena, for crying out loud, she was _born_ to think. She couldn't just _stop_. Unfortunately.

Scoop, smear, stuff. Her Holy Trinity of comfort food processes.

Oh, she was _so_ going to Hell.

Never mind that she wasn't Christian (was she any religion?). Never mind that she had seen the Underworld herself. Nope, Annabeth Chase was going straight to Hell in a handbasket, and she'd be damned if she would go without her comfort food.

Scoop, smear, stuff.

"There you are!"

Oh, great.

"We've been looking all over for you...we were really worried."

She rolled her eyes and swallowed. "I'm _fine_, Seaweed Brain."

"...You're in a kitchen cabinet."

"Which somehow makes me not fine?"

"Point taken."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Hey, Wise Girl?"

"Yeah?"

"...D'you think I'd fit?"

She thought about it for a while, rolling a giant white puffy marshmallow between her fingers. Would he fit? Physically, yeah, no problem. It was a hella big cupboard...probably had been magicked or something by some nymphs. She never was really fond of them anyway...they reminded her too much of Aphrodite, who her mother didn't like, so she didn't like her either. But Athena hated Poseidon. Damn logic.

Her only problem was a mental one. Was she ready to let Percy in? She and Luke had shared this cavernous kitchen cupboard as a hideout, a secret place where they could go to joke or cry or laugh or just _whatever_. It was where she kept her peanut butter and marshmallows, and where he had kept his lemons and salt (which she never quite understood, but hey). Was she ready to let Seaweed Brain into this place? What if he wanted to put stuff in here too?

"...Just close the door behind yourself."

She caught a glimpse of a smile before he turned his head to the side as he clambered in with gangly limbs and messy hair. True to his word, he shut the cabinet door behind him, leaving both of the demigods plunged in darkness.

It had never been this agonizingly warm in the cupboard with Luke.

She licked her lips and opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it. "Look, Annabeth, Clarisse is a...she's stupid. Ignore her. Everyone else does. Well, except me. But I only pay attention so that I know who I'm hitting! See, look. I've got a reason."

"But she was telling the truth, Percy."

"What, the Luke thing? Annabeth! You can't really think that...it's out of the question! There's nothing - "

"Percy, it's like knowing someone who committed suicide. You stand by the casket and the whole time you're thinking to yourself, _I could've stopped them, I could've listened, I could've seen the sign, it's my fault they're dead_...That's how I feel. Maybe...if I had just paid more attention to Luke...he was never the same after that quest. I could've...made things different, maybe."

He was quiet for a long time after that. She heard him shifting the his corner before he spoke. "Annabeth...please. Don't think like that. You...you're the most wonderful, attentive person I know. If...if something had been wrong with Luke that you could've stopped, you would've. You would have charged in, battle horns blaring, and dragged him to the Big House and help Mr. D and Chiron straighten him out yourself. But the fact that you didn't means that maybe it was something that you couldn't see...and if you could see it, maybe it was something you weren't meant to stop.

"Fact is, Clarisse is wrong and a complete retard. I mean, come on. She's a daughter of _Ares_. You're a daughter of _Athena_. You win, like, by default or something. Nothing you did could have stopped him...and you know that, Annabeth. I know you know it."

She focused on where she thought his face was, and she leaned forward. He was still talking, but she drowned out the words, and instead pressed a sticky marshmallow-and-peanut-butter-kiss to his neck/cheek...mouth?

She felt something warm and soft and awfully like a pair of lips pressing back against hers, and she felt herself flush, and yet...she sighed happily as a hand crept around the back of her head, toying with her curls.

Peanut butter and marshmallows.

Worked every time.

* * *


	7. real

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

7: real

* * *

He stands outside on one of the Princess Andromeda's multiple decks - _(Percy would know which one, he knows)_ - and he thinks.

He does that quite often, even more so now after the...incident. After the fall. He had broken nearly every bone in his body, Richie Nelson _(Apollo wunderkid)_ had told him as he lay near-comatose in the hospital wing of the ship. He is still recuperating; his bones hurt now, but he has learned to live with the animal of his pain.

He remembers the fall and landing both with perfect clarity and with barely any conciousness at all. He remembers a rushing noise going past his ears, and a faint wiff of ozone - was Zeus trying to kill him? _(Was Thalia trying to kill him?)_ - and then a mind-shattering pain. As he lay like a broken bloody doll upon the ground, flashes of images and memories, half-formed and wraith-like, flitted through his mind.

He remembered clear winter mornings, when Annabeth was asleep, when he and Thalia would watch the sunrise together. He remembered laughing as he watched Thalia and Annabeth "spar", twelve-year-old vs. seven-year-old. He remembered the dragon - Ladon? - and the searing pain in his face...he remembered the bandages, the tears, the ugly red scars...he remembered sobbing, grasping Thalia's tree like there was nothing else left in the world...

And then he had seen her again.

He had known, he thinks, that she was back, but he had never seen her. He had never seen her face, had never known if she had aged or not, had never known if her voice was the same, or if she still scrunched up her nose when she was upset, or if she still had that sparkle in her eyes when she laughed...

He feels the air, heavy with sea-salt, brushing against his bandages and casts and the few patches of bare skin. He inhales deeply - _(Sea-Poseidon-Percy-Annabeth-Thalia)_ - and he braces himself against the cold railing, the chill biting into his bare palms. It's cold at night.

He knows that when he goes inside he will be sedated with pain meds, and he will drift off into a - supposedly - dreamless sleep. But it's a lie. He knows he'll dream, because he always does. He always dreams of the same thing, and even in his waking hours it haunts him because...

Because...

The dream is of Thalia. She is sitting beneath the tree in which she once lived. Her hair is loose - she hates it loose, but he always loved it - and she is smiling at someone - at _him_. Her arms are open, and she laughs. _"Come on, stupid,"_ she laughs. _"Come on...Annabeth and Percy are down on the beach...we have some time together..."_ And he smiles and he sits beside her and holds her close, and he can smell peaches _(her favorite fruit)_ and fresh laundry _(she loves the feeling of clean clothes against her skin) _and strawberries _(her favorite shampoo)_ and a faint hint of ozone _(always a reminder, always)_. He can feel her skin, smooth and soft beneath her mouth, and he holds her.

He sees a tiny drop fall into the ocean, only it's not raining. There's no sunlight and no tree, no fields, no Annabeth and Percy at the beach, no Thalia with her hair falling loose around her shoulders...

There's only him and his pain, his broken body and broken heart and broken _soul_, and there's no one else to turn to because no one else cares. He began this, and now he has to end it, only it's tearing him apart inside.

_Even in his waking hours it haunts him because..._

_Because it could have been real.

* * *

_


	8. sleep

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

8: sleep

* * *

She is surrounded by the soft fluttering breaths of her sleeping siblings, all long lost to that happy land of slumber. But not her. Oh no, she wasn't special enough to have Somnus pay her a visit. She'd just have to suffer while her brothers and sisters caught up on their rest and relaxation. She punched her pillow in frustration and stuffed it back under her head, huffing in anger. Stupid sleep. Who needed it, anyway? 

Moonlight cuts a pathway through the curtains of the cabin, and she wonders what it would be like to be a goddess like Artemis: eternally beautiful...eternally _alive_...and she chose that life of..._celibacy. _Cue shudder, please. She wouldn't even want immortality if she had to act all _chaste _and _innocent_. Bullcrap, that's what it was, she decides, fluffing her pillow again before shoving it back beneath her curls. And anyway, who wants to be Goddess of the freakin' _Hunt?_ Huh? Bo-ring.

But that's just it.

Deep down, maybe she's a little tired of all of the makeup. Maybe she's a little tired of the endless matchmaking and chattering and brainless, scatterbrained, lovestruck, simpering fools of siblings. Maybe she sometimes looks at the Athena kids and wishes that she'd been born as one of them. Maybe she sometimes watches Percy laugh with Annabeth and breaks a little inside, because she knows that no boy will ever laugh with _her_ like that, because she's too damn pretty.

Not that Annabeth isn't beautiful. But it's a different kind of beauty. She knew that long ago, when she had been claimed - _labeled?_ - as a daughter of Aphrodite. Lovely, lithe little Annabeth Chase got brains and, with it, a kind of superior beauty; she, little lonely Silena Beauregard, got the simpering good looks and the lusty, tawdry beauty that came with the package.

Maybe sometimes she looks at herself and she doesn't see a future at all beyond these borders.

That's why she's so reluctant to leave, besides the fact that her father hates her. It's because she knows that outside of those invisible walls, she isn't Aphrodite's daughter; she's just some lusty, busty chick with a little too much to show. She knows that some women look at her with envy and some with disgust; they think she must be a "stripper, or a pole dancer, or something like _that_." Like _that_. Like a good little Momma's girl.

She turns her face into her pillow and she cries and cries. Finally, finally, Somnus takes pity on her. _"Sleep," _he whispers in her ear, _"sleep, and be content...for even a little while. Sleep, and you can dream that everything is alright."_

And so she will sleep.

* * *


	9. pride

**

* * *

**

bittersweet symphony 

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

9: pride

* * *

He sat alone at the edge of the ocean, eyes focused on the lightless horizon so far away. Hands, strong and firm, held him steady against the rock on which he rested as a soft ocean breeze played with his dark hair. He tasted that familiar salty tang that had accompanied all that he loved for as long as he could remember, and he wondered for a moment why it felt like something was missing...and then he remembered. He inhaled deeply in a vain effort to recapture that elusive scent he had left behind nearly fifteen years ago...sweet and faint, the smell of strawberries in the sunlight. _Sally..._

Sand whispered stories to him as it brushed against his toes, telling of the utter depths of the ocean where they had come from. He wondered what it would feel like to not hear them, to not sense the ocean, to not have the water as an extension of his own soul. It was a foreign idea to him, like asking what it would be like to have no head. The ocean was a part of him, a part so intricately connected with who he was that sometimes he didn't know where _he_ began and _ocean _ended.

But he did know who he was, all that was good and all that was bad. His flaws, so numerous...his vices, so many...there was so little in him that was good, that was kind, that was _decent_...he wondered sometimes if that was a side effect of being a god, because that rule seemed to apply to all of them. Sins, deceit, trickery, mockery, pain, evil deeds, pride, jealousy...the list extended as long as any of them would live _(which was for all eternity, wasn't that nice?) _and he didn't know what to do about it.

But he knew that, as sparse and far between as his good traits were, he had them. He knew that he had the capacity to love eternally, the capability to be just, the ability to make others laugh. He knew that he _could _forgive...he just chose to hold onto those offenses, far longer than was reasonable, he knew. But the more he looked at it, the more he thought about it, he realized that perhaps all of those attributes were obtained through...through mortals. He had somehow, somewhere, absorbed these few decent qualities through his company with humans...humans like Sally. Humans like his _son_.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He remembered so much pain, so many trials that he had had to overcome due to his children's strange cruelty, their barbaric ways...and yet he still loved him.

That was certainly a quality he shared with his son...they both loved too much. What was it his niece had said to his son...? _"The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation_."

She certainly was intelligent, he would give his brother that much.

The horizon, so distant, so dark, began to lighten. In the oncoming light of day, beneath the fading stars, surrounded by the ocean air, he felt something well up inside of him that he was unable to let loose...

_Regret...pain...anguish...sadness...suffering...apologies...punishment...and yet..._

_After all of that agony, he still felt his heart light up with pride and undeniable love when he saw him...when he saw him standing tall, laughing, running, swimming, saving, arguing, fighting, defending, loving..._

_His son..._

**_I am so proud of you.

* * *

_**


	10. love

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

**_

* * *

_**

10: love

_**

* * *

****"I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on Earth. I hold myself supremely blest - blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together -** "_

_The novel falls from her hand with a clatter, the hard cover rattling against the cool marble floor. Feet, small and bare, tuck themselves beneath a lithe body, full and youthful with all of the elasticity and beauty that comes with ageless existence. Hands, exquisite, fold themselves neatly into a lap._

_The window is open; she can feel the breeze brushing against her skin. Her hair sways with it, brushing, soft as a baby's breath, against her cheek. She can smell the fresh air (they are too high above the city for the stink of petrol), along with her shampoo (lavender) and the remnants of her tea (chamomile with lemon). Another smell lingers, that omnipresent scent of ozone that she has known since birth._

_Her eyes alight on that innocent looking novel that lies sprawled on the cold marble tiles. She is loathe to pick it up again - even this book, usually one of her favorite "children." And yet today those pages have lost their charm; today nothing is as it was, and she is disturbed by this fact._

_Her hand rests against that ever-growing swell upon her waistline, and she feels a tiny life inside nuzzle against her hand. She smiles, but it is filled with sadness; her smiles often are these days. She knows Father asks why; she knows everyone must be worried...after all, it is not as if she has never had children before..._

_But this time was different, because she had been the fool for once. When it came to her children, she used only the smartest, most cunning, most intelligent men...but she **used** them. They were her tools..._

_When she had met him, she hadn't even meant to meet him. She had been watching another, a classmate of his, when he had run into her with a book cart from the library, knocking her down and throwing books all over the place in the process. Dazed, she had sat back and watched him worry over her and the books. He was handsome; sandy hair fell over the lenses of his slender glasses, which almost obscured clear, bright hazel eyes. He was tall, well-built..._

_They had gone out for coffee; they had talked. There was no seduction. No "study sessions." Just...friendship. And then more...so much more. She pressed a hand against her growing stomach and wept, her tears burning her cheeks as the fell. "Never," she whispered, rubbing her child's - her daughter's - tiny abode. "Never will I let you suffer like this."_

_She knew now a new depth of pain...she suddenly understood, of all people, Aphrodite...love was, indeed, all-powerful. It had surpassed logic; it had surpassed planning; it had surpassed care and caution, throwing them aside without a second glance...and now she was alone, spent, and heartbroken; the only reminder of the love that she had thought was shared was the tiny life nestled inside of her. "I will never let you fall in love."_

_

* * *

_

She watched, eyes narrowed, as He spoke to her daughter. She watched as He made her laugh, made her smile...she saw her inhibitions, her carefully structured walls begin to slip away. She saw her watch Him as He talked, and she saw something shifting in those eyes, so very like her own...

She raised a hand to her temple and sighed softly. Echoes came back, singing gently on the breeze of her memory...sweetened tea and bitter, burnt toast with butter and boysenberry jam; two-day-old coffee, black, with French vanilla creamer; posters, colorful and bright, on the walls, the ceiling, the doors...; singing together on a day-long trip to Southern California. Her hand pressed hard against her mouth and her eyes stung at the corners, but she held on.

She saw something in His green eyes (too much like his father's), something in His smile, and then she knew.

She felt like she was a million pieces and one soul, and she was falling apart and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She suddenly felt empty inside, useless - a piece of darkened sunlight, or the sadness behind a smile _(her smiles are always sad these days)_ and she knows that no matter how much she promises, no matter how long she delays that pain and happiness, it will come...love.

"Annabeth," she whispers, and as her daughter laughs all she can see is Frederick and his sandy hair and his hazel eyes shining in the sun. "I'm so sorry," she says.

_I'm so sorry.

* * *

**If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. ** _

**Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. **

**Love never fails.**

* * *

A/N Passage one is from _Jane Eyre _by Charlotte Bronte; third printed version in the United States; page 464, third paragraph. End passage is from the New American Standard Bible, 1 Corinthians 13: 1-8.


	11. savior

**

* * *

**

bittersweet symphony 

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

11: savior

* * *

He felt...different. It was as though the weakness was not weakness, but simply...an absence of strength. The power, the absolute control and intoxicating mastery of others...that was still there, but buried deep.

He was going to drive himself over the edge...this was all he could do anymore, was think-think-think. He thought of plots, of plans, of nefarious deeds. He thought of ways to even the score with his enemies, thought of ways to persuade more to join his cause...he thought of regaining what he had lost. He thought of who he had been, once so long ago.

He had been a whole being, then, supremely created and powerful beyond all concious thought. He had been feared, revered...a wise and powerful ruler. He knew what was best for him, and what was best for him was the best for everyone, he knew. Why couldn't they understand that?

But no. They felt the need to usurp, to overthrow, to deceive...to tear, to destroy, to burn and mutilate until there was nothing left. He had watched through broken, fractured eyes as his kingdom had fallen to the ground, and he wondered what he had done wrong.

Threats he had eliminated. There was no sin, no anger, no malice in the hearts of those strange little man-creatures; they were innocent and stupid, unable to harm - unknowing of harm itself. What better state to exist in?

He had loved, had he not? He had a wife - but no, she was not satisfied with his love. She had, it seemed, to enjoy the love of _children _as well, despite his...his fear of the creatures. And so she had betrayed him, had helped to bring about the downfall of the greatest Age known to man.

That was how he had gained his most stalwart supporter; through that reasoning, that line of sight. _What_, he said, _are you but a petty thief? Were I upon the throne, thieves would not exist; everyone would be equal; you would not have to stoop and steal and sneak anymore. You could stand tall...you could be your own man. Independant...unhampered by the will of a father - a god - who cares naught for you._

He wondered why there were those who stood faithful to his faithless children. He was much kinder to them then they were to their own brood of brats; he had spared them from neglect and pain by eliminating them from the world. Here, they left their children to fall in the dirt and see the blood of their friends and comrades, blood needlessly spilled on the whim of some uncaring immortal.

They would see; he would show them mercy, even in the end.

He would kill them all, every single one. Then they would be gone from this world; they would escape the pain and suffering inflicted upon them by their fathers and mothers, and they would be free. Then their parents would suffer as their children had suffered.

He was great, he was powerful. He was strong and mighty. He was divine. He was...

"My Lord?"

He was growing. _Soon. Soon it will be time...soon I will arise._

_Soon..._

_I will save this world from itself._

He was a savior.

* * *


	12. hunter

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

12: hunter

* * *

It is cold in Hades.

That is her first thought, and it surprises her. She doesn't know how long she had stood in that waiting room with all the other ghosts milling about. She asked them questions, but they didn't respond, no matter the language. They had lost all initiative, any curiosity at all that they might have had. All they cared about now was getting out, going beyond, down the river to their rest at long last.

And after those endless, tedious hours of elevator music and uncomfortable chairs, that is where she is going now. _Oh, singers, let's go down...down to the valley to pray._ Does anyone pray here? There are no altars, nothing to indicate the positive answer. Her hands holding the wooden rail of the riverboat, she leans over to watch the debris in the polluted River of Death float by her. She wonders, as each object goes past, who had dropped it, how much it had cost them to finally admit that they were giving up their greatest dreams.

A golden crucifix, halfway eroded, drifts past, followed by a soggy Master's degree in philosophy and theology. _A nun, a priest, a monk...who knows?_ There are flowers of every color imaginable, all stained by the dark death in the waters. Books float on the water, sketchbooks and notebooks and date planners. Cell phones and iPods bob along in a current, spinning and dancing. Records whirl about like smaller discuses, and the old plume of a centurion's helmet swims along.

But beyond these are some things that even she cannot view without a touch of sentimentality, of sorrow, of regret. Not for anything she had done, but for the owners of the objects she saw: a family photo, a dog collar, a camera, scraps of paper with dreams written all over them. A sunshine barret that drifted slowly down the stream. A doll with red yarn for hair and wide blue eyes, her once-white apron trimmed with lace, her fingers chewed on by nervous four-year-old teeth. A blanket, covered in multicolored polka dots.

And then she realizes that now it is her turn to contribute, her turn to place her greatest dream, her greatest hope, her greatest desire in that dark, cold, dead river. This is the hard part. It is not admitting that she is dead to those whom she sees; it is admitting that she is dead to herself. It is admitting that all of those dreams are something that can never, ever be achieved by her. Never - such a small word, she thinks. It is bigger than thousands of eternities combined, because if you have eternity you can achieve some small thing, but if you have never you can do naught.

Slowly, her hands shaking, she is lowering her sacred silver bow into that cold water. Physically, she knows what she is doing; but mentally, she can feel so many layers being stripped away. Those layers protected her from herself, from her feelings and pain and utter anguish. And so she drops her arrows, she drops her years as a Hunter, she drops the love of her Lady, she drops part of her _soul - _and then she is left with her tears and her mistakes, because she cannot find a place for them in the river.

She can see the Fields of Asphodel coming up, and she thinks of how dreary it will be, how painful, to stand in a trampled, darkened field for all of eternity. But at the same time, she thinks: _peace_. There she might find peace to rest, at long last. But what if she tired of rest? What then?

And then, beyond the Fields of Torment, she spies the golden gates of Elysium and the shining Islands of the Blest, and she knows her course. She can feel something tiny spring up inside of her torn soul, and she knows that she has just found the last remnant of Pandora's gift. She has had all of the pain and suffering and horror brought by that golden box, so long ago; she thought that she had left her own box open a bit too long, and that that one last gift had left and gone. But it hadn't, because now that she had opened the box again she had found it - small and nearly crushed at the very bottom, but it was there.

Hope springs eternal in her broken, tattered, ancient soul, and she knows that her _never_ has become her _eternity_. She can hope again. She can dream. She will return to her Lady and her troop, and she will make her choice again.

Zoe Nightshade turns her back on the River Styx and faces the places of Judgement, determined - a Hunter once again.


	13. foresight

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

13: foresight

* * *

He had always hated time.

Time was set in stone - one hour comes after another, one day before the next - and although you could do anything with the timeframe that was given you you couldn't do anything beyond that. It was a restriction, and he had always hated restrictions. In fact, he viewed them in the same light in which he viewed rules: things that are made to be broken. Quite literally, if he had anything to do with the breaking.

And so after he had killed his first nemesis, after he had stalked it over land and sea and filled it with those never-failing arrows from his new golden quiver, he had seen the shrine where its body had fallen and he had taken it, claiming the oracle that lay within as his own - a way to fool time, to bend it. _Show me my future_. Time would not stop for him, but he could run with time, and that was what really mattered.

His father and his aunts and uncles and half-siblings all thought that he was more than slightly air-headed. He fell in love too easily, he was flighty, he spouted off _poetry_ at random moments - how could he possibly be all there? Only his sister knew, only Artemis, and only he knew that she still thought of Orion sometimes. That she still blamed him, even as she knew that he was still sorry for his actions all of these years later.

But they had passed this judgement on him early in his career as a god, and he would let them continue in their assumptions. That meant that no one analyzed his every move, no one stayed up late thinking, "And what of Apollo?" No. It was only him and his visions and the chariot. It was lonely; maybe that was why he had so many lovers (so many _children_). And he really did care for his lovers (and children), as opposed to Aphrodite or Ares or Hephaestus. Even as opposed to his own father, who had only cared about him and Artemis because they were _beautiful_. Who had only cared about Thalia because she was _special_.

Even so, despite his loneliness and his wish to stay removed from the arguments embroiling the pantheon, he somehow found himself drawn in to this new boy's quest. This...fluke. The son of Poseidon, Perseus.

The boy reminded him a lot of his father. He had spent some time with Poseidon - most prominent in his memory was their fifteen years of exile in which they built together. He wasn't as bad as his father said his brother was, not even by a long shot. He had a clear sense of humor, an affinity for smiling, and a wicked inner rythym - very useful when he had been writing music out by the wall.

Perseus shared more with his dear old dad than just his looks (_and he did look like his father, despite his short stature. Give him a few years. Look at Herakles_). When he watched the boy, he saw the same laughter that his uncle had, the same way of smiling. The same looks in both of their eyes. _And I'll bet he has a killer beat, too._

He was wondering if he would ever get the chance to meet the boy in person one morning as he prepared to ascend to the heavens. It was winter, cold and crisp. Ugh. He hated winter...this was most definitely his sister's season. Why couldn't his uncle have just handed Persephone over? She wasn't _that_ pretty.

And then his sister had called him. He had gone, _et voila_ - Perseus Jackson, in the flesh. He shot Artemis a quick grin, to which she raised a knowing eyebrow but said nothing. He had greeted Thalia, of course, and had taken a few verbal potshots at her Hunters, resulting in a fake argument between he and Artemis. All in good fun, but watching Thalia and Percy he knew that they were wondering how on Earth he and his sister could be twins. He grinned.

He tossed in a haiku, just to reset his obvious stupidity in the minds of his sister's girls, and had driven off to Camp Halfblood.

(Mental note to self: _no one _else may drive sun chariot.)

And then his sister was gone, and he knew who had precisely because he couldn't find her. But he couldn't tell Percy, couldn't really help the boy - but he did anyway. Rules are meant to be..., etc. etc., so on and so on. He knows the drill. So he had given him the railroad, on which his suspicions about Percy's personality were confirmed ("A god named Fred?").

And so after he had rescued Artemis and lost a friend, after he had nearly lost Annabeth to the Hunters, after everything was over and done, he continued to watch his cousin. From above, the sun looked down on the young hero - saw his school, his mom, his home, his world. And he prayed for him, because he knew that there was someone - something - above them all that looked down as well and saw more than he would ever see.

And so Pythias Apollo, master of the Oracle at Delphi, god of the sun and light of the people, once even Ra himself, watched over Perseus...and if he helped the boy out once or twice in the future, than maybe that was alright. After all, not everyone would break the rules so readily. Not everyone would help a hero. It couldn't hurt to have a little extra foresight.

* * *


	14. sirens

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

**

* * *

**

14: sirens 

**

* * *

**

He holds her close under the water, surrounded by that protective bubble (_why can't life have little bubbles like this? a place where no one could hurt her?)_, and he lets her cry into his shoulder. She feels his hand rubbing up and down her back in an attempt to comfort her, and even though she will never tell him, she is so happy that he's here right now, that it's him holding her and telling her it will all work out in the end. She wouldn't have anyone else.

It hurts. It hurts so much that she can't stand it, and the fact that she can't fix it makes it even worse. She feels like her heart has been put in an ever-tightening vise, and she can't break free as it squeezes and squeezes her pounding, bleeding heart. She almost wishes that she had a glass heart, so that it could just break and get it over with - but she doesn't, she has to _feel_ and _think_ and _hope_, even though she wishes with all her heart that she didn't. _Dammit_.

She knows that her mother is proud of her as a person; she's the favored child. She knows that - she tells herself that, anyway, to ward her demons off while she can. But in reality, in the world outside her bubble, she realizes that if she were to drop dead tomorrow, her mother would be sad, yes - but she has eternity. She had spent millenia watching her children die. What did one more matter? _Just one more_. That's all she is. An expendable resource. A _renewable _resource.

And her father - gods, her father. So scatter-brained but so strong, even if he himself didn't see it. But he couldn't bend...and he would break. She can see that, just as she can see her mother's pride in her. He was so protective, so loving...he did love her, had always really loved her, but he just couldn't show it. He was a _man, _after all; too many feelings and an itty-bitty emotional range to hold them in. So he poured his love onto his girlfriend-fiancee-wife, and then on their sons, but he didn't save any for her at first. By the time he had...well. She had already been gone by then.

She doesn't know why she wants her mother and her father together. She doesn't know why Luke was there. She doesn't...doesn't know...

_You can't lie to yourself, Annabeth_.

She does know. She's always know. Isn't it every little child's dream - a mommy and daddy who love and hold each other together? Her childhood was so fractured; she had taken her first steps in a shabby college apartment. She had never known who or what she was until she struggled through _Mythology_ on her own and everything clicked. Her mother had claimed her before she got to camp, isolating her from her brothers and sisters before she even set foot in the magical boundaries. She has never had the security of a real home with two caring parents, and she wants it. She wants it so much.

And Luke. Luke who held her when she had nightmares, Luke who made her hot chocolate, Luke who taught her to fight, Luke who gave her piggy-back rides, Luke who was her deepest confidant, Luke who gave her her dreams, Luke who bought her books on Greek architecture, Luke who rocked her to sleep, Luke who fended off the monsters, Luke who was so handsome, Luke who was a big brother, Luke who was so much more, Luke, Luke, Luke -

She doesn't hate him. _Can't_ hate him, really, not matter how much she reminds herself of what he's done. Part of her is _still _in shock - Luke poisoned Thalia's tree. Luke is killing Thalia's memory. _Luke_ is defiling and degrading _Thalia's_ sacrifice. Luke set a pit scorpion on Percy. Luke conspired to drag the three of them into Tartarus to feed the Titan Lord. Luke was breaking down the camp's borders. But every time she tries to hate him, she sees him smiling and dancing in the moonlight and fixing hot dogs and roasting marshmallows that he had stolen from a convenience store.

She wants him to be good so badly that her mind refuses to accept what Luke has become. She knows it, but she can't change it. She _can't._

So she cries into Percy's shoulder, safe in the bubble in the middle of the ocean where nothing can get in the way of her pain. She cries as that vise tightens around her bleeding, wounded, poisoned heart (_she's becoming Thalia's tree, so hurt, so broken_). But still, some small corner of her dying heart screams out. It is so tiny that it barely comes out as a whisper, but that whisper is enough.

_You have him. You have Percy._

And his hands comfort her as he holds her close and lets her cry. _He brought the bubble,_ she thinks. _He saved me_, she ponders. _The sirens...the sirens..._

The sirens were wrong. She feels her heart squeeze again, but it's a different kind of pain this time - a quiet pang, almost not there. It is another kind of hurt, a softer kind, and she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, so she does both. She chokes on her tears as the laugh spills messily out of her raw throat, and she feels Percy's arms tighten protectively around her.

She, in turn, tightens her grip on him. She can feel her tears grouping in the juncture where her head sits, her forehead pressing against his neck. _I won't let this go._ She can't let this go.

_Love hurts._

_The sirens were wrong_, she thinks. _They messed up_.

They didn't have Percy.

_This is better than the sirens._

* * *

Inspired by the song "Sirens" by Angels and Airwaves. "I can hear you breathe/I'm feeling the shake/And the sound of my heartbeat/Can't let go.../Do you know/I'm feeling the pain/Of my first love/I won't let it go.../Can't let go..."


	15. found

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

15: found

* * *

Peace was something he often sought for, but rarely found.

Elusive as Pan himself had been for all those years, peace let him chase it around and around, furiously dancing about obstacles, until he collapsed in a tired and sweaty heap. Then it crept out from its hiding place and came to him softly, seeping into the air through the quiet light of sunset.

He sat on the rocky ground next to the Tree, and he simply _was_. He let his mind drift for a while, aimlessly wandering - he could taste the sweet wild grass on the air, smell the ripening strawberries down in the fields...he could sense the rich darkness of the soil beneath him.

Sometimes he wondered if he could only sense those things because of Pan's last gift. He wondered if he was the only one who tuned into nature like this, if that was what the god had meant by saying he was a special soul.

"Hey, G-man."

He smiled softly, serenity only made stronger by his friend's presence. "Hey, Perce."

The demigod settled softly into the dirt and roots beside him, and he caught a whiff of his scent - the salty, briny scent of ocean water, mixed with the strangely sweet smell of mingling blood and ichor that all half-bloods possessed. "What brings you here?"

Percy shrugged, his eyes fixed on the far-off sunset. "Needed to think. Find some peace."

Grover could've laughed. "I just figured out how that works."

Percy shot him a look.

"You don't find peace," he told him, smiling. "Peace finds you."

"Dude, when'd you get so...Zen?" grinned Percy. "Even though I get the feeling you're right."

"I've always been Zen, young grasshopper. Om," teased Grover, happiness glowing inside of him.

"Right," said Percy with skepticism.

"No, really."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm thinking you're doubting me here."

"I'm thinking you're probably right."

"Loser."

"Loser."

"Double-loser!"

"Is that even a real insult?"

Grover laughed, shaking his head. "Nah, probably not."

Percy sighed happily and leaned back into Thalia's tree. A vaguely surprised look crossed his face. "Hey. This is...peaceful."

"Told you."

Percy rolled his eyes, but wisely refrained from comment.

"Hey..." he said after a while, his eyes focused on a blade of grass he was twirling idly beneath his fingers.

"Hey," responded the satyr, watching him.

"D'you think...d'you think I can handle this?"

"What this?"

Percy gestured widely. "This. This _prophecy_ stuff. I mean, normal kids don't have to deal with this stuff. Am I really...I dunno, _equipped_ to handle this? I'm fifteen, for Zeus' sake - I should be worrying about dances and asking out the girls I like and whether or not I'll be grounded for failing my Geometry quiz. Not...not about whether or not I'm good enough to save the world."

He fixed the Son of Poseidon with a look. "Look, Percy...if you weren't good enough to handle this, would you really be asking yourself if you were mature enough to handle this?"

"Probably not, no."

"Well then," replied the satyr, smiling at his friend. Percy caught his eye with a frown.

"Grover...are you okay, man?"

"What're you talking about? I'm fine," he laughed. The frown deepened.

"Well, you shouldn't be, which leads me to believe that you're not, and you're just hiding it from us all so that we don't worry about you. Either that or you're suppressing it, which is bad for you."

"...Annabeth put you up to it, didn't she."

"Well, she talked to me about it, yeah, but I noticed it too, Grover. I mean, really - any guy who can watch his idol just...fade, and be completely and totally okay after has something seriously wrong with him. And you don't, which means that you're not okay like you say you are."

He said nothing, staring at the darkening sky.

He heard Percy sigh and stand up. A hand pressed comfortingly on his shoulder. "Whenever you want to talk about it, G-man. I'm here."

He turned and walked away, down to the campfire to sit by Annabeth and talk to her about what he and Grover talked about, and to roast marshmallows and drink Coke and to pretend to be a normal teenager for just a little while.

But Grover remained, and stared up at the fading stars in the dark navy sky, not even black yet. He watched them glitter, tracing Zoe's constellation against the darkness as his mind wandered down worn and saddened pathways. He saw the sparkle of the stars echoed in those crystals in that dark, underground cave where the god of the wild, the god of all, had come to an end.

All of his life, he had chased after Pan, running himself ragged and into the ground, endlessly searching. He had sweated blood and tears, begged and pleaded for more chances, fought with his innate shyness to rise above opposition to achieve his goal and bring the wild home again - but for what? All he had now was a task and a far-off dream of forests and clear night skies...all he had now was a labor to complete.

He pressed a hand to his chest, breathing deeply, ignoring the hot tears that fell down his face. He knew deep down that that wasn't true. Once he pushed away all of the baggage - the pain, the feeling of abandonment, of emptiness that lay dormant beneath his confident new exterior that everyone assumed was Pan's gift...well.

There, he found the true gift. There, he found the source of the sound of panic. There, in the deepest recesses of his soul, he found that spark of life that had spawned endless flowers and forests and nymphs and rivers and pure lakes and wild journeys. Deep down in the darkest, most empty parts of his heart, he found the greatest passion man had ever seen - the rustic need to explore and adventure, and the ever-encompassing feeling of belonging to _all_.

He cradled that tiny spark in his spirit, and he realized that Pan was just like peace.

He had searched deep inside of himself ever since that day in the cave - the day his greatest idol had died. He had torn himself apart looking for some _real_ remnant of the Great God Pan...for anything. Anything. And then, when he lay torn to shreds, looking at peace and wishing for a miracle...he had found it. Found Pan inside of himself. Just like that.

"You don't find Pan," he laughed softly, happily.

And the Wild whispered back, _Pan finds you._

* * *

A/N: Hello, readers. Thank you so much for sticking by me throughout this story - your opinions and thoughts mean a lot to me, and I love reading through them. And because they mean so much to me, I've decided to ask for them in a specific direction.

I'm not sure whether or not I should continue this story.

I mean, I love this story - so much. This is my baby...my first-ever PJO story. I'm just not positive that I'm doing the characters justice with it.

Please, your opinions on this would mean the world to me. I want to take a step back and just look at it to see, and if you'd help me out, I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts.

* * *


	16. brave

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

16: brave

* * *

He feels like a ghost as he sits on the cold iron bench in the park. He watches families run past, little boys and girls with their cheeks flushed in excitement, and he views the happy hugs and gentle scoldings with hardened eyes and a strange, empty detatchment in his grown-up-heart. He'd never really...had that sort of thing. No discipline, no...no worried looks when he ran off. Just an idle reminder that he had left his soup in the living room or something. A reminder of something he had done wrong and had to fix.

He wondered, sometimes, if he could just go home and everything would be the same. He wondered if she would just go on quietly blaming him for everything that went wrong in the apartment, not noticing or just not acknowledging her son's week-long absence from their house. It wouldn't really surprise him if she did exactly that; between the work and the brandy, he was surprised everything hadn't faded for her at this point.

Running away hadn't been something that he had planned, a point that was heavily underlined by his equally empty schoolbag and stomach. He had woken up last Monday and decided that he wasn't coming back home that afternoon. He had wondered, off to the side, whether normal twelve-year-olds decided things like this. He'd decided that he didn't care what normal twelve-year-olds did, because he clearly did not fit that job description.

So he had dumped all of his school books under his mattress and stuffed two shirts, two pairs of pants, and some socks and underwear in a bag, along with the contents of the cash stash his mother didn't think he knew about. He would have felt guilty, but she never used it; and he felt kind of proud. Stealing was something he was good at.

He wore layers - two shirts, plus undershirt, plus boxers and jeans, two pairs of socks, and some worn-out tennis shoes. A thick winter jacket was zipped up around him, covering up his hoodie sweatshirt. He had left without saying goodbye. He had wanted to, to give his mother at least a chance to guess that something was different about him leaving this morning; then he had realized that it wouldn't matter anyway.

He had enough left in his pocket for a bus ticket to catch a train to somewhere. He didn't know where he was going, really, which was a hole in his plan. There seemed to be a lot of those. Like he had run out of money for food, and he had no ID, and he didn't have anywhere to go. He didn't really want to go back home, but he was running out of options.

He was a coward.

He knew that that wasn't totally true, but he felt like one. He was running away; now he was running away from the reality of running away. He was tired of running away; he wanted to run towards something instead. He wanted a goal, something he could really try for, strive towards. He needed that, or he was never going to be anything more than a scared, useless, cowardly little boy.

He hears a small huff and a shifting of nylon against nylon as somebody else sits down on the bench next to him. If he shifts his head ever so slightly and turns his eyes just right, he can see her perfectly. It's a girl, maybe his age, maybe a little bit older. She's sort of pale, her cheeks and the tip of her nose dusted with red from the cold. She blows hot air out from two chapped pink lips, watching with electric blue eyes as it forms a little white cloud in front of her face.

Her eyebrows suddenly draw together, and she frowns, first like she's thinking, and then in a mix of sadness, anger, and regret. He almost sympathizes, even though he has no idea what she's thinking about; he feels that way too. Her mittened hands are clenched around the hem of her thick winter jacket, and heavy combat boots adorn her feet.

"You know," she says quietly, "if you want to talk to me instead of just stare, you should probably say something." She turns to look at him, and those eyes take his breath away with just how intense they are. They are a shade or two darker than his own, deeper. He turns to face her full-on, noting the wavy black hair that's escaping from her red ski-cap.

"What are you here for? Shouldn't you be with your parents?"

"You're one to talk," she retorts, angry. It's an expression, he thinks, that she probably wears a lot. He notes the dark, thick fishnet stockings that are layered over her black tights on her legs, and the plaid skirt and chain around her waist. Yes. Very angry. He can see it in her face.

"I'm running away," he tells her. "Or running back home. I haven't decided yet."

She raises an eyebrow. "Well, that's very specific."

"Shut up," he sulks. "I didn't plan very well. I don't do planning. It was very spur-of-the-moment."

"And so now you're out of cash?"

"Got enough for one more bus ride. It'll get me home."

"Right back where you started."

"Yeah, got that, thanks."

He glances over at her. She's distracted now, staring at something across the walkway. He follows her gaze and finds a happy family of three; two young parents fawning over their little girl, scattering kisses over her sun-dappled face. He looks back at the girl on the bench and feels a strange burning in his eyes as he sees a very familiar longing plastered across her face.

"You're running away too."

It's not a question, but she nods anyway. "From my mother. Don't have a father."

"You and me both."

She looks at him from the corner of her eye, and a small smile sprouts on her lips, like a new flower opening. "So hey. What do you say you buy us some lunch with that bus money, and I pay for our bus fares?"

"So that's it?" he asks, reeling inside. "We're a team now?"

She shrugs, obviously a bit uncomfortable. "Yeah. I mean, if you want. We're both...in the same boat, I guess. My mom doesn't want me, and obviously my dad doesn't care, and it looks like it's the same for you. If you don't want to, we don't have to, it's okay..."

"But do you have enough money for two?"

Here she grins and flashes a small golden card at him. "Thanks to my mom. She actually doesn't know about this account yet. Her agent opened it for her as a reserve. I heard him talking to her bank manager about it, and I snuck the card out of his office after I distracted him. I planned," she says a bit smugly. He bites back an angry retort and lets a smile surface.

"So what's for lunch?"

"I'm feeling like Chinese. How about you?"

"Sounds good," he says. Then the small portion of manners he owns kicks in. "I'm Luke."

She smiles, wider than the last time, and kinder. "Thalia," she says. "I'm Thalia."

Thalia stands and offers him her hand, and he takes it. A thousand thoughts flash through his mind, but only one stays on the surface long enough to register.

_She makes me feel brave._

A year later, he will lean against the trunk of her tree and let himself cry. A year later, he will realize exactly what he lost that sacrificial night. A year later, on that very day, he will realize that he is no longer brave enough - no longer good enough - to be in the light. He dives into the darkness with reckless abandon, because he is afraid, because he can't go home because he spent that bus fare on crappy Chinese food, because - because...

When he poisons her tree, something inside of him dies, but he won't acknowledge it. And when he sees her, on top of the mountain, when her shield and spear flash so fiercely in the light, as she screams at him and chaos reigns around him, he only registers one thought as he falls:

_She makes me feel brave..._

* * *

A/N Well, obviously I decided to continue this story. Thank you guys so much for your support - I just went through a very dark patch in my life, a place of depression. You readers helped pull me out of it and get me back on track. I owe you. :)

* * *


	17. heart

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

17: heart

* * *

Paint spatters over the large, smooth canvas of the wall. The violent red splashes over the white surface smoothly, and the soft sounds it makes are as familiar to her as the sound of her own breathing.

Some of the color remains on her hands. There is always some sort of color staining her fingers, whether the residue of Sharpies she uses to draw all over her jeans, the stains of the ink pens she sketches with, the powder from the pastels she scrapes across the textured sand paper...all of the different colors beneath the sky, blooming to life on her fingertips.

She presses her lips together as she runs her fingers beneath the warm, rust-flaked water from the sink in the back of the room. Wiping her hands on her smock, she returns to her paints and her overly large canvas. She uses yellow - daybreak, she calls it - and blue - midnight is her name. She renames all of the colors in her head when she uses them, because this somehow connects her just a bit more to the thing that she is creating. What was it her art teacher had said? "Art is like giving birth, but minus the screaming pain." True enough.

She is surrounded by her creations, by her metaphorical "children." Sculptures of all shapes and sizes surround the room; paintings hang on walls. Watercolors are taped to windows, filtering the light that comes through, casting odd colors and shapes all around. She presses a knuckle to her lip as she tilts her head slightly to analyze the splatters as they are now, and when she moves her hand and bites her lip, she can taste paint. Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she can't help but smile.

She smiles because of the simplicity of being here, in this room, surrounded by her artwork. It is a place where there's no one to judge her; it is a place where she can think in peace, a place where she can let her emotions burst out of the little lockbox she keeps them in. It is a place where she can let go and be who she has always wanted to be. Lately, though, even the sanctity of her sanctuary has been filled with emotions and thoughts that are strangers to her usually practical mind.

Without bothering to wash her hands, she dips both into a bucket of light green. The colors mix and merge, and a startlingly familiar shade of green is staring at her. She sighs, rolls her eyes, and gets up to wash her hands at the sink...

...which uses water.

Brows furrowing, she contemplates just how difficult it is to escape from reminders of him. For god's sake, he can't possibly be _everywhere_. And yet, she'll go to the library and think about Annabeth, which leads to him. (She should be worried about how connected they are in her thought process, but she's never been one for petty jealousy. They save each other's lives on a daily basis; how could they _not_ be close?) The zoo? Horses. Zebras. Equestrians everywhere. She usually spends most of her time in the Monkey Pit, which she never really liked that much to begin with. The aquarium is out for obvious reasons. Earth and science? Running a special on earthquakes for the next to months. _Earthquakes._ Jesus.

In her house, in her studio - everywhere she goes, reminders of him are there. (Having three classes and lunch with him isn't exactly helping her cause.) She's pretty sure that this isn't any sort of love; last time she checked, seeing someone everywhere was a symptom of _obsession_. So there is no possible way that she could possibly have a crush on him. Nope. Obsessed with him? Yes. Obsession she can handle. But loving him?

Absolutely not.

_Besides_, she mentally scolds herself, _he's Annabeth's._ Even though he can't see it. Even though she had hurt him badly at the end of last summer.

Sighing, she kneels back down next to the bucket of light green paint. The darker shade of green swirls around the top, and it is this color she dips her hand in to catch.

She picks up the entire bucket - the label on the side reads "sea green," and she has to laugh - and throws it at the wall.

Paint splatters everywhere - all over the tarp on the floor, all over the wall, and all over her. She does it again with daybreak and midnight and with Athena - the same color as Annabeth's eyes - and with every other bucket of paint she has set up down here in her basement studio. And when she finishes, as the cans clank and roll and drool the remnants of their contents onto the blue plastic tarp, she still has that dark green smeared on her hands. She walks up to the wall, wading through the mass of empty cans, her bare toes squelching paint between them, and she stops as she reaches the colorful barrier.

Very carefully, she presses two dark green fingers into the wall.

Closing her eyes, she steps away and leaves. She trails paint up the colored concrete stairs and steps into a pan of lukewarm water she had put at the top of the stairway earlier for this exact purpose. She scrubs her feet and hands clean, and she throws away the water.

She names the wall _Percy_.

* * *

He is over at her house for a History project, and he can't help it: he stares in awe at the beautiful, expensive mansion. He catches himself when he sees her furious, shamed blush, and he knows that she considers that all of these things were bought with "blood money:" money her father earned by destroying nature. He bites his lip and offers her an apologetic smile. He doesn't know if she catches it or not; he cannot help but think that Annabeth would have caught his unspoken "Sorry."

_No. Stop thinking about Annabeth._

She tells him that she has to finish dinner, but he can make himself at home. She leaves, moving into the dining room, leaving him sitting on a sofa that probably costs more than his mom's car. He stays there, like a good boy, for all of three minutes before his ADHD - battle reflexes - kick in. He wanders around before spying an oddly out-of-place door. He swings it open and sees that it is a basement. An empty plastic tub, sides colored with watered-down paint, sits on the top landing. The steps themselves are covered in various colors, splattered here and there. A bright yellow handprint stands out on the wall. He supposes that his must be her studio, and despite feeling as though he is seriously invading her privacy, he goes down anyway because he doesn't think before he acts. (Annabeth said that. _Stop thinking about Annabeth!_)

He pushes open the door at the bottom of the stairs. A few strains of music drift out - a choir singing something in some foreign language. French, maybe. It's calming, and it is what encourages him to step inside. He goes in further, and stops in his tracks as he sees the wall. It is covered from ceiling to floor in all different colors of paint. It clashes here and works together there, and it sends off waves of such powerful emotion that he takes three steps towards it without even realizing what he's doing.

He is at the wall now, running his fingers over the smooth, sloping texture of the paint. He crouches to read the tiny writing at the bottom. After much squinting and concentration, he can read her cramped handwriting: "_Percy_, 9/6." She called the painting _Percy_?

He steps backwards into the room, surveying the statues and paintings. He smiles at one of the watercolors that is taped to the windows; it is an amazingly accurate representation of a coral reef. He runs his hand along the paper, which emits rasping noises from beneath his fingertips.

"Percy?"

He hears her voice echoing down the stairs, and he sighs. He turns to leave, and as he walks through the doorway he glances back at the wall one last time. He freezes where he stands as something catches his eye that he never noticed before.

"Percy!"

"Coming," he calls. He charges up the stairs with reckless abandon, and he manages to get himself seated on the couch two sconds before she comes back into the room. She eyes him suspiciously, and he grins happily up at her. "So," he says, "the Trojan War."

* * *

Later that night, she goes back to the studio. She knows that Percy was down here, but she doubts that he noticed, much less read, the title down in the bottom corner of the wall.

She freezes as she glances at the wall. Something catches her eyes that she never quite noticed before, and her heart begins to thrum faster inside of her chest. It shouldn't be possible; fingers weren't shaped like that. No matter how you pressed them together, things like that didn't happen.

_But loving him?_

_Absolutely not._

_"The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind."_

She walked closer to the wall in a daze. Slowly, slowly, she traced her fingers around the outline of a tiny sea-green heart.

* * *


	18. it still hurts

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

18: it still hurts

* * *

It still hurts.

It shouldn't; he knows it shouldn't. None of the gods blame him for it, because they understand that a parent as far removed as they all are cannot possibly cause such evilness in a child…but it is here that they are wrong. Sometimes, when he's ready to drop from exhaustion, he entertains the notion that if, perhaps, he had been a bit more involved – gone that extra mile – it wouldn't have happened. Because his child isn't evil. Confused, angry, disoriented, yes. But evil?

And then the thought is gone from his mind, because his head is like his liquid element – quicksilver, flashing from thought to thought and task to task. Apollo used to joke that he was more ADHD than his children, but in reality he just thinks on his feet. He is quick and spry and tricky; he is a thief, after all. _The_ thief, really, but he doesn't need to broadcast it. He doesn't seek out acclaim.

His son, though – his son did. He worked and worked…to earn his father's respect? His father's pride? Foolish boy, he had had it all along, independent and strong as he was. He had loved him a sliver more than all of his others; he had invested his pride and love into this child above the rest. He had paid dearly for his folly. He pays still.

Because no matter how many times they tell him it isn't his fault, it still hurts.

He watches him often, just as he did before; as he goes along his various ways, he always keeps the best eye he can manage on him. It was easier before; darkness did not so cloud the young man's thoughts and heart. He is obscured in it now, entrapped in a shroud of blackness so thick not even his keen sight can pierce it. But before, when he was young – so, so painfully young – oh, he was good. He was pure and kind and clean, and even though he was tricky and a thief, he made up for it because it was who he was. He was the kind of person one couldn't help but love.

The kind of person a father adores.

When he is finally able to snatch a moment of peace, every now and then, his thoughts invariably center on the tainted figure of his son. It _is_ his fault – he knew his son wanted to be tested, wanted to prove himself with a quest, but he had been afraid. _I don't want to lose him_.

And even though he had kept him from most bodily harm, he was still lost.

_How is this fair?_

All he had wanted was to protect his little boy – his child – his _son_. He had wanted to keep him whole and safe, to always preserve the strong, golden spirit that danced in the man's blue eyes, so like his own. But instead, he had become the true catalyst of the war, of the suffering, of the darkening of his precious son's soul.

_This isn't fair_.

All he ever did was love him. All he ever did was care.

And yet it still hurts.

* * *

A/N

Ahahah.

-raises hands- I surrender; please don't shoot me yet.

I've been a bit stuck lately – not only with my fanfiction, but with my writing in general. But now it's all come tumbling loose – just in time for school. So I have to contend with essay after essay plus homework plus clubs. But I am writing – so hard. Gah. Beating the words out of myself.

I've reached a block on _It Takes Two_; I know how it ends, I just can't _get_ there. If you have any ideas, messages would be more than welcome. On that note, I know that I'm asking a bit much here, but if you'd stop by my account at fictionpress . net and go over my original work, I would owe you my life. Message me if you're interested, please.

Anyway, updates should be more frequent now; _Fall Into The Sky_ should have a new chapter in about an hour, so yeah.

Hopefully seeing you soonish,

dnrl


	19. all alone

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)_

* * *

19: all alone

* * *

He hates the world.

He hates children; he hates their squealing laughter, their flushing cheeks and little wriggling limbs. He hates watching them trample all over the ground; he hates watching them stuff their squishy little cheeks with food every night.

He knows that they think that he doesn't even care enough to watch them. How wrong they are. It's all that he can do anymore – even when he closes his eyes, they're hiding in his thoughts. He would kill for a drink. He would _massacre_ for a drink. He might even agree to his father's ludicrous second option and go castrated for a drink at the moment.

Because he knows that he has to sit, corpulent and red and bloated with Diet Coke, in the same damn chair and play pinochle with My Little Centaur every night, watching children – children, for gods' sake – run around and train and climb walls and knowing…

Knowing, even as he watches them, that even as he sees them living, he will also see them dead.

Those are the faces that haunt his minds most of all when he closes his eyes – the faces of every dead demigod, lying on the bloodied grass. Lifeless eyes watch him – _maybe if you'd helped just one bit, taught us just one thing, we wouldn't be here_. But all mortals had to die. _But maybe not so soon_.

But he will not move, not even as they whisper poison to his mind.

Instead, he remains in that godforsaken chair, playing cards and drinking Coke and wishing he could die and just get it over with.

He lives during the day with the faces of the living, more serious and determined than ever before; at night, the dead come to pay their visits to his guilty mind.

He hates it; the children, the guilt, the voices, the…the _sobriety _of the whole situation. That was what wine was for, wasn't it? To take away the guilt, the gravity of things. That was why so many unhappy people were alcoholics – the ultimate never-ending cycle. They were depressed, so they drank; when they sobered up, they were even more depressed because the problems were still there. Then they drank again to make them go away for a little while, and then they woke up again, and…so on.

He is so tired of the cycle.

He takes to insomnia, refusing to rest his head upon a surface and sleep. He will put up with the living, because they have a chance…_you could help them_, the dead voices cry. _Help them like you could have helped us._

What could he do, he wants to cry. He grows fruit; he makes wine.

_You know the mind_, they say. _You know the enemies. Give softer words; give a helping hand. Make them feel just a little better_.

He turns his heart to stone and closes his ears.

But then one day the whispering is screaming, crying, sobbing, and he can't ignore them any longer.

Because he closes his eyes and he sees his _son_.

He knows that he is being irrational; he was never close to his sons, never affectionate with them. They received no special treatment, no privileges; there was barely any contact.

But the fact remained: one of his sons was dead, leaving a brother alone to mourn. Leaving his father behind. Abandoning his friends.

_You could have helped_, his son says.

_I know_, he responds. _Oh god. I know._

He watches his son's pyre from the forest.

He pretends his does not weep as the ashes fly into the air.

_Why didn't you help?_

I don't know.

_Why weren't you there?_

I don't know.

_Why? Why? Why?_

The winemaker closes his eyes and descends into his own hellish madness, for a moment.

Something inside him breaks, and the tenuous hold he had on his composure crumbles to nothingness. He buries his face in his hands, biting back howls of anguished loss. His son, _his_ son, his _son_ – a child, his child, just a boy, barely even a man, not even real stubble on his cheeks, gone, taken, ripped away like a bandage from a wound.

It _hurts_, because he knows that if he's honest (which he isn't often), he doesn't hate children. He likes children, could love them if he would let himself.

But he can't – he can't, because then he would go insane. He was human, if only for a few moments; ichor didn't run through his veins, not at first. A human parent would never stand watching their loved ones die, never stand be idly as their children's blood slicked the grass beneath their feet. And so he was a god, a distant, aloof, cruel god…and he doesn't want to be. He isn't a god, it's torture to pretend…

It is not punishment enough.

Forgive me, he pleads.

_No,_ comes the answer.

But…why? he asks. A choked sob catches in his throat as he leans against the tree trunks. Why?

There is only silence.

They are gone.

He is all alone.

* * *

A/N

Hey all.

Been a while, huh?

BUT.

Midterms are done with.

All is well.

And I am inspired.

You know what that means.

:D

FICCAGE.

Hence this...um...thing. -pokes distatefully w/ stick- I loathe it, but it had to come out or it would _never_ go away. Urg. I certainly hope that you people know who I'm talking about, though...

Headin' to bed now.

Night, all!


	20. so it goes

A/N

I'm having severe writing problems. It feels like I can't write anymore. Language isn't listening, and ideas aren't flowing like they used to. It feels like what creativity I have is dying. :( I'm hoping that writing more will bring it back, so we'll see. Sorry that this drabble isn't up to my usual quality.

Also, **spoilers for the fifth PJO book. **Just a warning.

* * *

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)

* * *

_

20: so it goes

* * *

Her son was coming home today, she knew it. She felt it in her bones, in her very soul. She had to get everything ready for him - he'd be back soon, and he'd been gone for so long. He would be hungry, thirsty, tired, probably filthy from whatever little game he had been playing. Oh, he always got so dirty outside, ripping his pants up at the knee, shirts covered in grass stains. But that was alright, because she secretly loved to wash his little clothes, to hang them out to dry. She loved to feed him and watch him smile his gap-toothed grin. She would tousle his hair and feed him a cookie and he would gulp down almost a pitcher of Kool-Aid.

Shaking her head and smiling fondly to herself, she made her way down the hall towards his bedroom, sweeping up as she went along. It always got so messy in this hallway and she never knew why. Humming, she opened the door to his room. His race car bed was messy, the coverlet carelessly thrown over the untucked sheets. Clicking her tongue disapprovingly, she tucked in the sheets and smoothed out the cartoon-covered comforter with tender care. She plumped the pillows carefully, and picked up the teddy bear off the floor. "Oh, you're missing an eye," she sighed. "That boy abuses you so. I'll fix you up soon, never fear."

She moved on to the wardrobe, brushing away the fine layer of dust that covered the wood and the mirror. She opened the drawers and ran her fingers over the carefully folded clothes. Oh, he was such a sweet boy sometimes, putting her clothes away just as she asked him to. Such a sweet boy. Such a _good_ little boy. She picked up a few toys and put them back in the bright red firetruck toy box, humming to herself again. The room set in order, she left, closing the door quietly behind her.

Down the stairs she went, into the kitchen. She switched the oven on to 400 degrees and pulled a new cookie sheet out of the cupboard. She would make chocolate chip today. He loved chocolate chip cookies, freshly made. He told her that that's how he thought heaven would smell - like fresh, hot chocolate cookies. Smiling, she pulled a tin of cookie dough from the refrigerator and scooped it onto the tray, piece by piece, in neat little rows. She put the tin back and fetched a pitcher and the Kool-Aid mix from another cupboard. She poured in the powder and mixed in the water from the sink. As she waited for the pitcher to fill, she petted the head of the Medusa sitting on the windowsill above the sink. "And he's safe from monsters, isn't he, Ms. Medusa? Oh yes. My boy is safe. Those monsters would never hurt my little boy."

She took the full pitcher in hand, turning to bring it to the kitchen table, where she would -

_Stabbing, burning green light, searing into her eyes, onto her soul, oh it **burned**, why? Why did you let me do this?! **Why**?! You knew - you knew it would hurt me, knew it would kill me, oh god, the visions, they're building up behind my eyes, make it stop, make it stop, oh god please, anyone, anyone, is anyone listening?! I don't want to see, don't make me see, rip out my eyes, my mind, scrub it clean, burn it, burn them, **I don't want to see my baby like this, please no** - _

_There are golden eyes watching from his face, his face, only not his face, older, darker, scarred and hurt and where was I why did this happen where is my baby? Where is my boy? The golden eyes, they won't stop staring, and that voice is scraping my spine, sucking the marrow from my bones, oh god, my baby, my little golden boy, not like this! No! "He is mine now. Never yours, never his mother's child, nor his father's. Mine, mine, I claim his body and his mind. And do you know, he gave them to me. To me. Not to you. Not to his mother. Not your son anymore." Oh god please no stop, stop, stop, my boy, not my boy, please, no - _

"Oh, I dropped the pitcher!" she exclaimed, looking with dismay at the shattered pieces.

"Don't worry," he broke in from the doorway. "I'll get it."

"Oh, you don't have to do that! I'll sweep it up, and run the mop over, just to be extra careful. Don't want any nasty splinters in our baby boy's feet!" She smiled at him, radiantly. It dimmed as she saw his face awash with tears. "Sweetheart, what's wrong? Is everything alright?"

He managed to smile through the water. "Everything's fine, dear. Everything's fine."

* * *

_Everything's fine._

He feels horrible every time he says it, every time he comes back here and sees her. _I could have stopped this_, he thinks. _It's my fault. I broke her. She was so beautiful, so vivacious, so marvelous - I broke her. I killed her._ Still he returns, as though doing penance for his murder of the woman he loved. Loves, still, even in her state. He had come in the middle of a fit to find her screaming on the floor. He had tried to hold her, but she had thrown him off, tears streaming down her terror-lined face. So he sat and waited until she came back to the surface. Still broken. Still hurting. Still alone. So alone.

He stays with her through two more fits that day, leaving every now and again to assign a few lackeys some messages. Today is a bad day. Their son's birthday. She remembers halfway through and makes him a cake. He helps, so it's not as burned as the cookies. They wait up until nearly twelve, when she at last drops off, still waiting for her son to come home to blow out his candles on his birthday cake. She had found some old party hats and streamers, and she had made him a card. After he lays her in bed, he folds the card and hides it in his breast pocket. He throws away the cake, but saves one of the candles. He cleans the cookies away and replaces the broken pitcher. He places a new tub of cookie dough in the fridge.

Upstairs, he makes his way down the hall, setting things on the floor or knocking them sideways so that she can fix them in the morning like she always does. He enters their son's old room, smiling faintly as he always does when he sees the race car bed. He runs a hand over the lovingly neat cover before messing it up, pulling the sheets here and there and tossing a pillow and the one-eyed teddy bear on the floor. He takes out a few toys and sets them here and there on the floor. He goes and lays in the bed for a while, turning his face to the pillow, smelling fresh summer breezes and little boy sweat and a sweet lingering odor of a mother's perfume. He stays for a while, trapped in a golden prism of the past where sunlight fell on a happy home with a newly born baby and a happy, whole woman and a god who never told the story of the sight-gifted Oracle of Delphi.

He allows himself that dream for just a while before he rises again.

He is gone before he takes a breath.

In the morning, she will wake. She will make her way down the hall, humming softly to herself, straightening the furniture and knickknacks that have been disturbed by her darling little boy. She will go into her room and click her tongue in disapproval over the disarray of his bed. She will smooth out his covers and tuck in his sheets and put his toys away. She will bake him cookies and make him Kool-Aid and tell herself he's safe from the monsters. She will live like a fly set in amber for the rest of her days.

So it goes.

* * *


	21. dead

A/N

The significance of various dates will be explained at the end of the piece. Some baselines: I'm assuming that Nico and Bianca were four and six, respectively, when their mother was killed and they were placed in the Lotus Casino. This means that yes, they would age in the casino, but slowly. They have a two year difference, at least in my mind. I left my books at home, so I have no reference points. Urgh. Anyway. Here's the story.

Also, **spoilers for the fifth PJO book. **Just a warning.

* * *

**bittersweet symphony**

_(made of bitter dreams and sweet regrets)

* * *

_

21: dead

* * *

She was never afraid of the dead.

Dying – _dying_ scared her, the actual moment of passing. Her grandmamma used to tell her stories about people who didn't pass as they should have, who lingered, trapped for eternity, doomed to appear only as spirits, unable to move on. She hated stagnation, being still; she would go insane if she were trapped like that. She was afraid of dying badly, in a fire or by drowning, or going as her great-uncle had – by hanging. Dying was unpleasant; dying was gruesome.

But those who _had_ died – they were neither unpleasant nor gruesome. They were peaceful; they were serene. It didn't matter if they died in battle or in health, in flames or on their bed at ninety two. They still went on, their souls finding their everlasting rest, and it was good. She knew that; her father had reassured her of this after her mother and her baby brother had taken the road to Heaven. She had been less than ten at the time, and now she was over twenty, but she could still hear her papa, with his voice raspy from too many of his cigars and his moustache unshaven in his mourning: "They are safe now, in the embrace of God and his angels. They are happier than anyone could be in this great and terrible world of ours."

And so the dead did not frighten her, not when she saw them lying in the streets of Rome or Milan after the riots, not when she saw them resting peacefully in their caskets, not when they rose in the mist of their graveyards – not even when she saw the dead man pinned to her father's office door. She wasn't meant to see, but the screams of the main had woken her. She had crept past the staff, the guards, and the police and their semicircle around her papa's door, and she had seen the man – a messenger for her papa – pinned to the door with a sword.

They left for America the next hour, with her papa explaining to her that things in Italy were changing, that it was unsafe for them there. She knew that; she was thirteen, and not stupid. She read the papers, heard the newsboys crying out their headlines: "Mussolini loses election," becoming, "Mussolini declares coup," and finally, "Benito Mussolini inducted as new Prime Minister." Every day, with every new headline, she watched the lines on her father's face deepen. Not safe in Italy, indeed.

And so they arrived in America and were taken to a grand white house, where the leader of the country apparently presided. A president by the name of Harding welcomed them as ambassadors from Italy, but behind his eyes she could see the words: "refugees." And they were. They remained in the United States, received automatic visas, but nevertheless, they were refugees, fled from their home and separated from their people. The year was 1922, and she was thirteen years old.

She spent the Depression in the United States, not as badly off as the people she saw in the streets. On days when the guilt became a titanic weight upon her back, she would wrap her scarf around her head, put on her gloves and street shoes, and go out to help. She would move the dead, often helping mothers recite prayers over the bodies of their starved children. She would hand out what food she had to those who needed it most, and offer a few cents if she could spare them. As much as the dead did not scare her, she had no wish to create more of them if she could prevent it. Still, slowly, as a new president took his oath and began his changes, things began to take a brighter shine.

Even with more money and more jobs to go around, dark clouds still gathered on the horizon. Headlines were once again the bearer of ominous news; "Socialist party begun in Germany," became, "Adolf Hitler stages failed coup," which ultimately turned into, "Hitler elected as leader of Germany." The Nazis came into power, and while those in America believed that they were immune to the threat, those from Italy knew: it would come for them, as sure as the ever-encroaching tide.

The year was 1933, and she was twenty-four years old. She was also in love.

Well, the descriptor was a bit extreme, to be sure. She had never spoken to the man; she had seen him once or twice, in querulous conversation with a Senator or a Representative in the Capitol, and again out in the streets. She thought that he might have been a lawyer; when accidents occurred with fatal consequences, he was there. Silent, watchful, and present. He was handsome in an Old World way; he was tall and pale and large, though not corpulent. He was dark, enough so that a friend called him "gloomy" and "oppressive," but she could not see him that way.

And one day, he noticed her.

The wooing was swift, her already blooming love of him certainly helping its progression. He brought her strange and delightful flowers that she could not find in any book, and he told her tales of horror and joy, of love and loss, of life and death. He knew many of death. In return, she spoke of the homeland, of the beauty she saw there, of the starry nights, of the riots and the killing. He never gave his name, and she never offered hers, but she had her suspicions. They were unfounded and foolish, but she had them still.

They were sitting together in a lounge in her home in New York one day when a maid dropped the tea tray. Cutlery and china flew together with a crash, with glass exploding and smashing against the table and floor. Calming the near-hysterical maid with a quiet smile and a gentle dismissal, she bent to clean it, and he knelt to help her. Together they reached for a particularly sharp shard, and she reached it first. Her finger pressed down and the glass jutted up, impaling itself into his flesh.

He squeezed it out and wrapped his finger in a handkerchief, but not before she saw his blood. His golden blood. She stared at the shard of white china on the floor, one end stained with gold. She stared at it even as a bright light flashed, throbbed, and vanished. When she looked up, he was gone.

She did not see him again for almost a year, but she thought of him every day. As the war began to brew in Europe, she drew sketch after sketch of him, envisioning their meeting – for they would meet again, she knew it – and planning what she would say to him when she saw his face before her again. In the end, all of her planning was for naught, for when she did see him again, in the winter of 1934, she simply touched his cheek and said, "My name is Maria."

The next year brought more quiet joy into her life, despite less frequent visits from him. He was open with her, speaking of confrontations with his brothers and sisters, and his visits with his son, Adolf, as he attempted to sway him from the path he was on. "I know it is useless, Maria, for I know what he will do," he told her as he held her close to him. "But I cannot help but hope that something that I say will change the Fates' will, if not his."

Still, even with their closeness, it was not until she was thirty that they breached the final wall of their relationship. Even in what her dying father called her "middle ages," she retained some of the beauty of her youth – enough to turn his head, still. She awakened at three to find him pacing frantically in her bedroom, ranting in various volumes about his son, his foolish, foolish son. "It has begun!" he yelled, gesturing wildly, as was his wont. "The fool, I warned him, I _warned_ him, I begged him not to! I, a _god_, begged my own mortal son! But no, nothing, I accomplished nothing, he will destroy them, what have I _done_? Maria, I don't know what to do!"

And so she went to him and drew him to her mouth, and she let him take control of at least something, because he needed it. He needed to at least know that not everything was taken from him, that not everything was beyond his formidable reach and power. She could give him that, at least. And so he took her in the dawn on the morning of September 1, 1939.

In June, her daughter was born.

Her father named her Bianca, and kissed her before he died, passing on his blessing to his granddaughter. "May you have," he rasped, "the longevity that I possess. And may you, my daughter, live love as well." He had fallen still. She gently closed his eyes and kissed his forehead as her newly born and named daughter cooed at her breast.

Her father was enchanted with her. He would hold her for hours as he talked to her mother, and she was equally adoring of him. She never cried in her father's arms, or even all that often in her mother's. She was a sweet darling, well behaved and good tempered. She was quick to learn everything – to speak, to walk, to read. She was toddling around on tiny two year old feet, getting into everything, but no one could find it in their hearts to be angry for more than a moment.

Still, her father was in torment. His son still advanced, still murdered, still ruled as a crazed tyrant, and he still had no control. Maria knew that his siblings blamed him for his son's faults, and saw his son as an embodiment of his father, but she knew that they were wrong; he was a good man. A kind man. A man who had a heart larger than the world, but had been hurt too much to show more than a sliver at a time. Still, she could be content; she knew he loved her. And so he came to her again and again and again.

On a cold winter morning, she awoke once again to find him pacing her room, though this time in silence. She sat up in her bed, and when he looked at her, she opened her arms. She enveloped him gently, letting him love her once again, because he did love her. And she loved him. The date was December 7, 1941.

It was September when Bianca could finally cuddle up beside her mother and touch her baby brother's face. She cooed delightedly over him, rubbing his nose with her and fluttering her eyelashes against his cheeks. "I give him but-ter-fly kisses, Mama!" she told Maria proudly. Her mother laughed, and baby Nico wiggled his nose. His father was happy with his son, but not as he had been with Bianca. Maria confronted him on the subject.

"Why are you not pleased with your son?" she asked him one afternoon as Bianca napped and Nico fed at her breast. "He is whole and healthy, he is as sweet as Bianca was as a little one. What is wrong with him, that you do not love him as much?"

He watched him eat for a long time before responding. "It's not Nico that I'm displeased with, Maria."

"It is that he is a _son_," she said quietly, brushing a strand of black hair. "Not all children are alike, my love."

"I know that, Maria." Still, there was a shred of chilliness in his eyes that was absent when he looked upon his daughter. But he held his son and showed him more affection than he had before, so she marked it as a small victory. The world moved on, and so did she.

At least, to an extent.

The war was over, but still he worried. He often told her of increasingly angry arguments between his brothers and himself, mostly about children. He mentioned a prophecy made by the Oracle of Delphi, and told her that when a child of the either him or his brothers reaches the age of sixteen, they may be able to destroy the gods. Another sliver of coldness entered his gaze whenever he saw his son, and once again, Maria reprimanded him.

"Bianca is your child also," she reminded him as she held both of her sleeping children close. "She is the elder. What is to say that she is not the prophesied child? Adolf is not the ultimate model for your sons. Or for any of your children. Please, stop this judgment."

"I will try," was all he said.

It became another small victory. Very small, in the grand scheme of things.

He came to her again the next day, a rare occurrence. She was in the lobby of the Grand Hotel where she was staying while her house was renovated, and he pleaded with her. He asked her to come to the Underworld; he told her of the palace he would build her, twice as grand as the old family estates in Italy. Still, she refuses. She will not have her children raised in darkness. But this desert place, this pocket where time is slow, that she will do. If only for her children.

"Let me get my purse," she told him, rising. She stole a kiss and sent a fond smile to her children as they dashed around the columns in some endless game of their own invention. She made her way up the stairs, aware of his eyes on her aging body. He would not love her as he did now for much longer, for she grew old even as he stayed the same. Soon she would be only his confidante, and then nothing more than an old friend. But she accepted this, as she has accepted all other things, because she loved him.

Oh, how she loved him. She loved their children. She loved her life, and she was sure that she would grow to love the place in the desert. This too she would overcome, and she would prevail, as she did at everything that came before.

"And may you, my daughter," her father rasped out in her head, "live long as well."

"I will, Papa," she said quietly, closing her eyes. She was surrounded by the feeling of love and peace. "I will."

Lightning struck.

_She was never afraid of the dead.

* * *

_

A/N

Okay, timeline stuff:

Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fascist party in Italy, lost the popular election and staged a coup, overthrowing the Italian government and declaring himself Prime Minister of Italy (also known as _Il Duce_) in the year 1922.

The Great Depression occurred worldwide with a focus in the U.S. from the years 1929 to 1941. (It was actually ended due to increased production of goods and jobs because of the United States entry into the war, not because of Roosevelt's New Deal, which took until 1943 to fully trickle down into the economy.)

Franklin D. Roosevelt took office and began the New Deal in the year 1933.

Hitler and the Nazi party were elected into power in the year 1933, after a failed coup d'état landed him in jail in 1923.

September 1, 1939, is the widely accepted date of the beginning of World War II, due to Hitler's invasion of Poland.

December 7, 1941, is the date of Pearl Harbor, the bombing of the naval fleet by Japan. It was the act that led to the U.S. joining the war.

The war ended on August 15, 1945.

I ended up making Maria a lot older than I wanted to in this one, because I began by expelling her family from Italy after Mussolini came into power, forgetting that Zeus killed her after the war. Oy. The end takes place a year after the war ended, which means that _my_ timeline (which is not referenced against official Riordan material, by the way) puts Nico and Bianca at the ages of four and six (respectively) in 1946. Just…clearing that up.

Also, this is seriously long. I don't like it, but it was the best story that I had. I was brainstorming a lot of different ideas and this was the only one that came out sort of decently. Bleh. Sorry. Just had to get it out. The next chapter of _It Takes Two_ is being edited right now, because I still hate it. So. More on that later.


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